(bright gentle music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

(bright gentle music continues) Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.

(joyful music) - [Announcer] Community: learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events.

We've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

- The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more, straight ahead at "The Fork in the Road."

♪ Mm-mm ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Mm-mm ♪ ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants, and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same: results.

(upbeat music continues) (lively music) There are multiple ways to farm, multiple things to farm, a variety of lifestyles, and, most of all, a variety of results.

This episode explores everything from squash to cattle and even sweet Georgia butterbeans, grown by families, nurtured by students, professors, and volunteers who farm for their local communities and often so much more.

♪ Mm-mm ♪ (upbeat music) - [David] Let's begin this episode in the educational fields of Athens, Georgia, where a variety of crops are grown, harvested, and distributed by teachers, students, and community volunteers.

(energetic music) While many people believe squash to be a vegetable, its biological classification is a fruit because it develops from the flower of a plant and contains seeds, which is the defining characteristic of a fruit in botanical terms.

Squash originated as a wild plant in Central America and Mexico.

The squash family, which includes familiar varieties like zucchini and pumpkin, include some of the largest and most diverse fruits in the plant kingdom.

Squash vary in color, texture, size, and taste, making squash a versatile crop that can be prepared in many different ways.

Squash is packed with nutrition and high levels of vitamin A and C, fiber, and iron.

(upbeat music) And to learn more about squash, we head to Athens, Georgia to visit Ty Brooks, who works in the horticulture department for the University of Georgia and is the director of UGArden.

This is a farm developed for the purpose of empowering students to grow their own food and teach them the principles of organic farming.

That's growing without the use of pesticides and synthetic chemicals.

- UGArden is our student community farm here at the University of Georgia.

It was started back in 2010.

A group of students put forth a proposal.

They wanted to create a community garden space somewhere on campus.

So they started out here with a plot about 50 by 100 feet, and they quickly started producing a lot of vegetables, partnered with some food distribution programs to start getting some of that food out into the community as well.

And now the farm is about 10 acres in size.

We produce about 20,000 pounds of produce every year.

Over 90% of that goes back into the community.

- [David] You grow more than squash, but today, squash is abundant in many different kinds.

- [Ty] Yes, this one here is an acorn.

This is Starry Night acorn squash.

- [David] And I think a lot of people don't know that is squash.

They think of yellow only.

- Yes.

Starry Night acorn, it's got that Starry Night name 'cause it has all that speckling and flaking on it.

I cannot recommend this acorn squash of variety enough.

I've grown this one a lot.

Flavor is excellent on this one.

And then right over here on the other side, here we've got a type of butternut squash.

This is a miniature butternut squash, honeynut butternut squash.

These are also a miniature acorn, so that's about as big as they're gonna get.

I have not personally eaten one of these yet, but this variety was actually recommended to me by a chef who said that it was very good.

So I'm looking forward to trying this one.

Another one of our summer squash, that people don't typically always associate it as a squash, is a zucchini.

So this is dunja zucchini.

It's also probably one of my favorite zucchini varieties to grow.

Just good yielding.

I really like how open the plants are, so it's easy to kind of see your squash to where you can get to it as well.

You'll notice we have stakes around our squash.

This is something new I'm trying out this year.

It's sort of a trellising method for our summer squash.

So basically, as that squash grows, a lot of times the lower leaves will start to die down, turn yellow, and have issues.

You can cut them off.

That won't affect the yield of the plant, and it'll help you be able to get in there and harvest.

But it just helps you see what's going on, cut down on humidity, and help the spot pest in your squash as well.

Helps with harvest, too.

A zucchini, especially the silvering on the top of the leaf for this dunja, that's very characteristic for the variety.

So that's not a disease.

That's exactly what that leaf's supposed to look like right there.

(bright music) - [David] Now, you talk about squash, cucumbers, zucchini.

This is all in the squash family?

- Yes, it is, cucurbits.

You know, our squash, zucchini, like you said, melons, all these things are in the cucurbit family.

The variety that we're looking at now is probably one of the ones people are most familiar with, with summer squash, and that is yellow crookneck.

That's the one you're gonna see in the grocery store and things like that.

So, on a squash plant, there's gonna be male and female flowers.

And these are easy to spot.

Our male flowers, here's one of our male flowers, there's no little baby squash at the base.

If I can see a young female flower, what it'll look like is it'll look like there's a little miniature squash attached to it at the base that hasn't started forming yet.

This is essentially a female flower right here.

You see the little squash here?

That's what it is.

It's gonna be even smaller when it starts out and the female flowers attach.

Once it gets pollinated, that squash will start to grow bigger.

A lot of times early in the season, people are always like, "Oh, my squashes, they're just sort of rotting and falling off and not growing."

That's because they haven't actually been fertilized.

Alright, here's a great example of a female flower before it's even opened.

It looks just like there's a little baby squash here.

And there's the female flower that has not opened yet.

So this'll mature a little bit more.

It'll open up once it's pollinated, then this little squash will start to grow.

So if this doesn't get pollinated, it might get a little bit bigger, but then, essentially, it's gonna start kind of getting soft and rotting and look funny on the end.

Here's probably one down here that did not get pollinated.

Here's an example.

This squash did not get pollinated, and so it's just, basically it's not gonna grow.

It's not gonna turn into an edible squash for us right there.

- [David] For these students, what's a typical day for them?

- So these students are here three days a week in the mornings, and they're here during our primary.

Primarily we harvest on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays during the summer.

And so they'll show up with us.

They'll help us come out to the field.

If it's a harvest day, we'll harvest, we'll wash, we'll pack.

A lot of times we also have additional volunteers coming in to help with that.

Tomorrow is actually our tractor training day, so we'll be putting everybody on tractors.

If they haven't driven tractors for a first time, I think they'll have some fun getting to learn to drive a tractor.

When it comes to the farm here, it's very interdisciplinary.

We're not really a research farm.

We are an experiential learning and service learning farm for the students.

But we do have student-based research projects that happen out here, and those are interdisciplinary.

So, horticulture happens out here.

We have human geography professors out here that are doing heirloom seed-saving projects.

Then we have engineering students that come out here.

They help us come up with new methods to do some of our post-harvest stuff as well as equipment development.

Biology, absolutely.

Botany is happening out here as well.

Business, the way we try and generate some revenue from the farm is we have an herbal business where we grow medicinal and culinary herbs.

We produce spice blends, teas, and salves, and then we market those around town and sell 'em.

And our students help with all of that.

(upbeat music) So this is sort of our post-harvest area that I'm gonna show off to y'all a little bit.

So all this was built with students here on the farm that we built all this ourselves.

So this is what we call our bubbler.

We harvest from the field, and it would need to be washed in water.

This bubbler set-up really helps with that.

But basically, what we've got set up here, we've got two wash basins with fills right here where we can just get 'em filled up.

And once they're filled up, you can see this PVC coming down, if you can look in here, there's holes drilled all in this PVC.

This is a blower for this.

You can use, I've built these before with just the cheap spa blowers.

You can get 'em off online anywhere, for less than 100 bucks a lot of the time, and hook it up to your PVC pipes that are drilled with holes.

And then what it does, it's gonna circulate air through those pipes, and it's like a little veggie spa.

So when you've got your heads of lettuce and things like that, it's gonna knock most of that dirt off.

The heavier dirt will sink to the bottom, and then you can take that lettuce or whatever else, and then you put it in our salad spinner.

So right here, this is a washing machine.

This is a food-safe plastic trash can that we've turned into a colander.

There's a little pool noodle down in there to keep the trash can from kicking.

It sits down in here, and we just fill it up about this high to the top of the ridges here to keep the salad from flinging out.

And it's just on a little timer.

We just turn it on, and it will get up to speed.

So we can spin a whole trash can's worth at one time.

And we'll take it out once it's done spinning, and we'll put it on our drying table.

This is also, things that don't have to get spun will come straight out of the bubbler and onto our drying rack.

It can drip dry here, and then packing into bags or some of our containers here.

It all gets weighed, it gets labeled, and it goes into our coolers and then out for distribution in the community.

So this is one of our cold storage units here on the farm.

And basically, what it is, is this is a CoolBot system.

So CoolBot system, you take a look inside here, there's a window AC unit right here.

Now, window AC units, they do not go below 60 degrees, okay?

But here we have our CoolBot controller.

So this has our actual temperature readout in here right now.

How it works is there's a little heating probe that goes up against the thermostat sensor for the window AC unit.

And what that does is it tricks our window AC unit, as long as the room is appropriately sized and well insulated enough, you can get this down to just above freezing in here.

And that allows us to essentially create a very inexpensive cold storage room.

But this is totally something that you could raise some funds and construct at a school if you needed some additional space.

Once you get your garden big enough, you know, a lot of time refrigerators don't cut it, and they get really expensive, and it's not too bad to construct yourself something like this.

- [David] It's obvious that Ty loves growing, cooking, and most importantly, eating the multiple nutritious varieties of squash, a fruit that grows in so many shapes, colors, flavors, and sizes, and are watched over by the dedicated students and volunteers of UGArden, who lead the way for the next generation of food system leaders.

♪ Mm-mm ♪ (upbeat music) - [David] We now journey from Athens down to Abbeville to meet a farming family that started from scratch and has made their mark in the world of ag.

(bright uplifting music) I'm not sure that I've ever heard the phrase, "Farming is easy," but one saying that is a little more common, "It's just a way of life."

Sometimes the farm is passed down, and sometimes you just start from scratch and grow.

And that's what Eric and Brooks Gibbs decided was going to be their way of life.

And in time, the whole family came on board and have embraced it wholeheartedly.

- I guess you could say just kind of wanted to start something.

Wanted a farm, but had to start.

So we're the first generation.

Nobody in my family farmed.

Some of the land I was able to pick up was just marginal at best for the row crop, cotton, peanuts, corn.

So we had to find a crop that we could grow on marginal to weak land and hope to turn a profit.

And that's kind of how I turned to the peas.

And for the early years there, we just grew 'em, picked them, shipped them in the bag, that's in the hull, unshelled, to markets.

As years went by, we've evolved, and we've kind of taken it to the next level.

We do the packing houses, the shelling.

Now we have a lot of wholesale markets, stores, retail side.

We've just steadily tried to expand and grow that side.

(bright uplifting music) - We have this store here in Abbeville.

This is our farm location.

This is where we do all of our packing and shelling and all of that.

And then we have an Eastman store that opens Monday through Friday, 12:00 to 5:00.

And it's an open-air market.

We sell, of course, our peas and butterbeans.

We have local-grown tomatoes there.

We have squash, and corn, and okra.

Different times throughout the season we have that.

Now, that Eastman store is seasonal.

We open in June and close the last day of August.

We sell ice cream, strawberry and blueberry.

We raise our own cows, and we sell fresh meat, and we have home goods.

All three of my kids were born and raised right here.

They help with everything.

I mean, they know, in the mornings during the summer, when they get up, they've got to come to work.

And I love that about our life.

At the end of the day, we can all say, "Job well done."

- [David] Your parents started you and your siblings at an early age.

What did that mean to you?

- It meant a lot.

I started working here full-time when I was in the sixth grade.

I could not imagine my life any other way.

There's been tough times, but more than anything, we've faced adversity, but we've grown from it.

Every challenge that we have faced and every challenge that we've went through, we've grown through it, we've learned from it, and then in the end, we've came out stronger and on top.

- [Eric] Everybody needs life lessons, and there's no better way to get life lessons than on a farm.

You're going to deal with adversity, you're going to deal with setbacks, and you're going to have good times, too.

I feel like it's been a blessing to be able to raise our children on the farm.

No matter what kind of future that they choose or what kind of path they go down, it gives you a foundation to where you got something to build off of.

(upbeat music) - [David] I see these flowers, and then some are full-grown.

How long does it take to go from flower to... - A flower to a harvester pea?

About 14 days.

This pea here is still, it's probably 10 days to 11 days right here.

This one here will be just right when we're back in about five days.

This is your next picking right here, these four.

- Machine or hand?

- Hand.

- [David] Now, some of these are pretty long.

How long do these things get?

- [Eric} That's fully mature in length.

As it matures, it will change color.

That's fully mature.

(lively music) And see, now the husk is dried out and the hull, it's easy to shell out.

And it'll roll right out.

- [David] So at this stage, they're pretty hard?

- Yes, sir.

You can be fully linked, like this, but the pea is not grown.

It's still just a snap.

This pea here, at that stage right here, is still probably about six days away from being fully mature.

A little more husk.

See the white that's inside the hull?

What we'll do is blow that overnight, but it will help dry that out so that the sheller don't beat it up so bad and make the peas look dirty.

'Cause it'll just, it's real wet.

That pea there still needed another three days.

We pick daily, they're transported back to the packing shed.

We bring them down, we palletize them.

They'll be placed under them fans, and they'll blow all night.

If you don't, when it goes into the shellers, you're going to get a lot of goo, and you're going to mash and bust the peas up.

But they'll stay under the fans all night till about seven the next morning, then we start the shelling process.

Each variety will be shelled individually.

We typically do anywhere from three to five varieties per day.

Most common is we're always doing Cream 12s, Elites, White Acres, Pink Eye, purple hull.

Then we'll do some Zipper, some Brown Crowder, some butterbean, butterpea, colored butterbean, little bit of all of it.

They run through the cleaner, then they'll come inside.

Some varieties, depending if it's got a lot of hull, we'll run through the electronic eye, but most everything will come in and it'll go straight to the tables And that's where all the ladies there, then they pick out the imperfections and trash that's left in it.

Technology's changed a lot.

Some of it's been good positive things, and some of it probably not so much.

Farming, technologically, has advanced so fast that you can get left behind mighty quick in the farming practices, keeping up to the yields that we have to today to try to be at a break-even margin.

(lively music) - Life is going to be hard, and in the ag industry it gets even harder.

But I know in the end we're going to end up and we're gonna be okay, because at the end of the day, we're a family.

We're gonna go out there, and we're gonna work every day.

And it truly takes all five of us in our family to keep this farm running, and I wouldn't wanna grow up or spend the rest of my life any other place.

- Every family that farms together needs a little cow herd together, 'cause there's no better way to bond and find out your trust besides working cows together.

You can work cows together, and you can figure out right then if we're going to make it through the tough times or if we're fixing to split.

There's no other stress like working cows.

- [David] So, from butterbeans and Zipper peas to pecans and even tasty cuts of Georgia-grown beef, you can find it all in the stores or online, on a seasonal basis, of course.

The Gibbs grow it well, grow it right, and when you do swing by, take in the sights and scents of South Georgia country, and the Gibbs themselves plan to treat you like family.

(gentle music) ♪ Mm-mm ♪ (upbeat music) - [David] Let's continue our farm journey south from Abbeville to Valdosta and visit a community that combines beautiful gardens and life on the farm to capture the true essence of Southern living.

(warm music) Open fields, pecan groves, sprawling oaks, and flowering gardens.

That's the setting of Fellowship Brookside.

Yes, this is our first "Fork in the Road" story about an assisted living community, but once you begin to explore and learn about what this fourth-generation family business has created, you'll quickly understand why.

John LaHood is currently the president of Fellowship Senior Living.

- I grew up walking distance from this barn behind me and the senior living community in front of me.

Almost every day of my life, from a very young child, was spent either working or playing in this barn or building relationships in the senior living community Fellowship Brookside.

It's been wonderful just getting to know an older generation, being able to experience life on a farm, but also experience it through their eyes.

We produce beef here, we raise cattle, finish out the beef and serve it in the building here.

And it's just a great way to keep life on the farm meaningful, know where our food source is coming from.

It's healthy, nutritious, pasture-raised beef.

It's really appreciated.

- [David] John's son, George, is a fourth-generation LaHood, and like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, embraced the mission of Fellowship and cherished this land, often taking residents out to experience it for themselves.

(cheerful music) - Not many people at all have a place to come like this, much less when you get to be a senior adult, you're even more limited on the opportunities you have.

And you know, at Fellowship, you know, that's one of my favorite things to do is, you know, find somebody that enjoys outdoors as much as I do and take 'em on a ride, get outta the office.

I look for every excuse I can to get outta the office for a minute and go on a ride.

If you can come to the river, that makes it cool.

- [David] What's it mean to you to continue this tradition?

- It's very cool that there's opportunity for multiple generations to be involved and have opportunity, not only to, you know, earn a living, but also, you know, contribute in a larger way to other people.

- [David] At Fellowship Brookside, they not only embrace the ranch and farming operations, but also the surrounding gardens and the quality of food within.

Jaime Peters is the Regional Dining Services Director for Fellowship and has been working with the LaHoods for the past decade.

(lively music) - Well, it's completely unique to really be able to provide the best food that we can to our residents.

We've established our own cattle company because our community here is located on a farm itself.

And when the residents can look out their back window and see where their beef is coming from, I think it's truly a special and unique place to be, having a locally grown product, and that it's a healthier option.

The bulk of the beef is coming in as a ground beef.

We'll serve meatloaves, beef stroganoff, hamburgers fresh from the farm.

We also package and sell our prime cuts, not only to local residents, but to the community as well.

It's really wonderful to see the residents being able to enjoy some of the food items that we have available because of this unique experience.

Not only do we have the farm here where we source our beef, we also like to source locally some of our produce, and then we also like to support small business with some of our pork options.

We are going a step above and beyond to serve them truly the best, knowing where we are sourcing our food from.

- [David] It's kind of neat watching these guys work out here.

It's gotta be special for you to see and for maybe some of the residents to see sometimes.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

They enjoy fishing in the pond, they go on buggy rides and get to ride around and see the cows and see the guys work on the farm.

You know, completely unique.

There's just nothing like this.

(vibrant music) This is our little version of our little garden that the residents like to take care of themselves.

We have some Meyer lemon trees in the back.

We have some fig trees here.

And here our residents have been working on our raised beds.

I see blackberries, tomatoes, succulents, strawberries, fresh herbs, everything that we can use to provide healthy, locally sourced product.

They are the ones that are doing this.

But yeah, they really enjoy this, and we love providing it for them.

- A lot of history here, a lot of unique features about this property.

We try to give them plenty of choices, give them plenty of opportunity to get outside, enjoy the fresh air, enjoy the scenery, you know, see the farm in action.

It's really a unique setting and a unique way that we're able to operate this particular senior living community, Fellowship Brookside.

Taking care of people is hard.

To be able to share some of that, too, with some of our residents that live at Fellowship is pretty cool, and I don't think you could find that or replicate that anywhere.

Very blessed.

I'm thankful for what my great-granddaddy envisioned, and you wouldn't think you can have a piece of property, you know, five miles from town in a rural area that, you know, would gain enough traction to turn into a multi-generational business.

(vibrant music) - [David] So from collegiate-run gardens in Athens to family-run operations in both Abbeville and Valdosta, all three offer a sense of comfort and appreciation for quality and an overall love of community.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road."

(cheerful music) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by... (joyful music) - [Announcer] Community: learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events.

We've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(bright gentle music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

(bright gentle music continues) Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.

(gentle music)